Reviews for Roughing it in the bush

The average rating for Roughing it in the bush based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-26 00:00:00 Kurt Leeper Roughing it in the Bush is one of those books that is undeniably important (within its own limited sphere of influence). But it is also way more important than it is readable. As an icon of Canadian Literature, Susanna Moodie has particular importance for Feminist Canadian writers. Her work has directly inspired many Canadian memoirs by women, and Margaret Atwood, one of Canada's most honoured writers, found inspiration in it for her poetry cycle, The Journals of Susanna Moodie. But Moodie's memoir, Roughing it in the Bush, is an excruciating read. Moodie was a bourgeois English woman who immigrated to Upper Canada when her military husband retired after the Napoleonic Wars. Roughing it in the Bush details the "immigrant experience" as Moodie sees it, and one is unlikely to find a more bitter, whiny, unsavory expression of an immigrant's tribulations anywhere else in literature. Moodie complains about everything. She hates the weather, she hates the work, she hates the lack of culture, and she hates life. And all I could think when I read her whining, and all I can still think, is "Waaaah, waaaah, f*cking waaaah! Suck it up!" Moodie was a spoiled, miserable woman -- at least during the period she covers in Roughing it in the Bush -- and I, for one, found it almost impossible to sympathize with her. Add to that the fact that Moodie's writing style, very much of her time and place in the world, was painfully boring, and you can imagine the joy this book can bring to anyone who reads it from cover to cover. Had I not been reading this for a course, and had I not chosen to write my final essay on Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie (which I much prefer), I would never have finished Roughing it in the Bush. And yes, I hated it, but I am giving Roughing it in the Bush a second star simply because it is important, and I can't deny Moodie's place in Canadian literary history. But still...ugh!

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-18 00:00:00 Jon Weinheimer Truth be told from an academic and literary history, cultural point of departure, it indeed needs to be pointed out that many (and in particular women) scholars do tend to now consider and approach British/Canadian author and memoirist Susanna Moodie as a 19th century (and therefore early) feminist (and yes, Susanna Moodie and her sisters certainly did seem to have had both an enviable amount of both basic and advanced education, ample opportunities for writing and even having their authorial endeavours published at a time when this was not at all common for girls and women both in England and most likely globally, and furthermore that all of the Strickland sisters indeed presented for the 19th century quite emancipatory attitudes with regard to gender issues and slabery in particular). However and the above having been said, I also and personally have to admit and categorically claim that I have since I first had to in detail peruse Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush (her memoirs about immigrating to and settling with her husband in 19th century Canada) for a grade eleven English term paper on early Canadian writing considered Susanna Moodie's musings and details about her and her husband's immigrant experiences not much more than basically and sadly just a generally constant and bickering whine-fest, a litany and laundry list of one complaint after another. For while of course and naturally, settling in 19th century Canada (or rather in what would later become the country of Canada, and the province of Ontario) could be harsh and difficult, the recurring and overwhelming complaints and even at times angry outbursts seemingly always emanating from Susanna Moodie's pen in Roughing it in the Bush about basically everything from the weather to the fact that her new home was not like the genteel British countryside she and her husband had left behind upon emigration, this to and for my reading eyes (both when I read Roughing it in the Bush for school and when I recently tried a reread) have certainly and very quickly become both tedious and annoying, leaving me with the indelible and sad impression that Susanna Moodie's writing talents and her sense for and of adventure and imagination notwithstanding, she is I am sorry to say and in my opinion first and foremost a frustratingly pampered and rather spoiled British bourgeois who whines and bellyaches way way too much in Roughing it in the Bush when her immigrant and settlement experiences are not what she had assumed they would and probably should be (for it is indeed abundantly clear that Susanna Moodie obviously and wrongfully expected that her settling in the "bush" would not be all that unlike living in rural England).